Theo glanced at me, confused. I stared at him, still huddled in the corner of the lilac bedroom.

“Did you…” I didn’t want to break that moment he had, but his stare of confusion made me too curious. “Did you get those words, too?”

“Yeah.” Theo dropped his gaze. “Yeah, I did. This is… how I defeat that monster, isn’t it?”

I didn’t say anything. I still felt like an intruder on his moment.

“Do you know the… the other three ghosts?” Theo asked.

“Yeah,” I whispered.

He turned his face toward me. He had been crying so much that his tears had turned clear again.

“Who…?”

“There are two talking ghosts in the locked room. Male and female. And… a ghost of a little boy. Of… you.”

Theo closed his eyes again, his back toward me. He rubbed his face, which didn’t do much to clean it. More just move the sludge around.

“I need to leave,” Theo said, his eyes still closed as he held out a hand.

I glanced at my wolf timer. “You have less than ten minutes.”

“I’ll run.”

It wasn’t my place to convince him to stay. He needed some time alone to think. I got up from my corner and took his arm.

“Front door? Or back?” I asked.

“Front.”

I didn’t say another word. I simply lead him out the door, through the entertainment room, and through the living room out the front door. Once Theo felt the breeze on his face, he opened his eyes and moved past the front porch, his brows furrowed.

“I’ll see you later,” he said before moving around the house.

Once he left, I felt all the emotions of helplessness slam into me. He was hurting, and I barely said anything. This had to be overwhelming for him. We’ve discovered the way to weaken them, and it involved Theo confronting his ghosts.

I moved almost numbly to the tool, quickly pulling out the glass and placing one pane of it in the greenhouse. I wanted to get the tv and computer upgraded, and those needed glass. I put five more bags of sand in the tool before slipping inside and unloading all my findings from foraging into the storage unit.

So much had happened today. I built the shed, Theo and I got another memory orb, we got a huge clue about why we were here. We also had discovered the rest of the wolf territory, and I found out I could build outside furniture. Then we figured out exactly how to weaken them.

A huge day. And yet it was hard. Despite the to-do lists phasing out, I feel like we had a lot of huge, end of game objectives. But we could still do these by the end of spring.

We had to.

Speaking of to-do lists, I finished placing the last of the resources in my newly upgraded storage unit before reaching in my pocket and pulling out my to-do list.

Strengthen the fence

Purchase shed

Build shed

Begin lawn care

Make sure no essence of them remains in your house

I let out a breath. Lawn care would begin tomorrow, then my to-do list would be done. The last to-do list I’d receive. Then I’d work on the end game quests and finish those.

Ghosts. Theo needed to face his ghosts. Were there ghosts I could talk to for him? Did it all have to be Theo? It was worth experimenting with.

The wolf timer blinked, and I stayed in the covered back porch. I figured out from before that the wolf wouldn’t enter the back porch, so I wasn’t rushed. Instead, I picked up the clipboard and flipped through the pages until I found my levels.

Farming level 24

Cleaning level 27

Logging level 32

Cooking level 27

Building level 31

Animal Care level 24

I tried not to get frustrated. I had gained a whole two levels in cooking without buying the fourth article of clothes.

“Shouldn’t there be some feeling when I’ve unlocked this?” I muttered to the alien overlords that may or may not respond. I tried buying the slip-on shoes that were part of the chef’s outfit before I realized my dopamine points were in the negative. I did not regret that purchase of information. I needed to know. Theo needed to know.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

And Theo was dying. I had bargained with these alien overlords to get him back. There were still a few unanswered questions, but this was my purpose.

Despite my unease at the alien overlords, a part of me now understood why they erased my memories. If I had the knowledge of what I was supposed to do right from the get-go, I would have burnt myself out finishing the to-do lists as fast as possible. Every failure would have felt ten times worse, and I would have been completely ragged by now. Despite my memories still mostly erased, I knew myself well enough by now to know that’s what would have happened to me. Mainly because I was already trying to think how I could speed the process up even now.

I placed the extra glass in the TV and the computer. They didn’t turn on, though I wasn’t sure what I expected. Both gave a sheen. I probably still needed electricity.

Theo would be back tomorrow. At least, I hoped he would. This was a lot to process.

I went back to the clipboard, flipping through the pages until I reached a newly unlocked section that made me smile. Furniture.

There were a few sets I could buy. There were separate lawn chairs I could make out of wood, and a nice, long bench that I was eyeing. There were even some words written under it.

Ideal for placing among lilacs

Right underneath that was a small end table, with more words written underneath that.

For a book, and even a glass of lemonade

I tried to cover my smile, because I still needed to keep the alien overlords at a respectful distance. Yes, I was starting to see their logic, but their vast amount of power they had scared me. Even though I had long since given up the idea that I was a rat in a maze, I still felt insignificantly small against two powerful cosmic beings who pulled the strings of this game.

There was plenty of outside furniture for me to build, including a porch swing. I wanted the grass to look a little nicer than it was, but I had plenty of wood for this. If wood was all it took. I’d also work on getting those slip-on shoes for my cooking, and hopefully I’d get enough to raise my animal care and farming levels, too. Maybe planting some flowers would, in a roundabout way, count as farming.

Between all this, even though my to-do list would be done by tomorrow, I still had a mountain of work to get done. On top of all that, I wanted to see if I could communicate with any of the ghosts like how Theo did with his Nana.

The ghosts who were left were the two people talking quietly in the locked room, and the active ghost of little Theo. If I had any luck with the remaining three ghosts, it would be little Theo. I’d already tried once to communicate with the boy. Maybe tonight I could try again. Just to see what happened. While I waited, I could always clean the walls of the green room. It still had junk in the room, but it was a lot more manageable.

I walked up the stairs onto the landing, quietly entering the green room. It was starting to get dark, but I still hadn’t heard any activity lately. The blue room, which was apparently Theo’s old room, was decluttered and cleaned, so I might not be able to hear him as strongly. Either way, I got to work cleaning the walls of the green room, keeping my ears focused on any abnormal activity on the second floor.

Killie still refused to come to the second floor during the evening. I couldn’t blame the girl. I wouldn’t either, unless it was a matter of life and death.

I heard giggling from Theo’s room, but it was faint. Almost like I could think it away. A part of me was sad. I remembered how terrified I was of that giggling boy, how much my sanity was lost because I didn’t know. Now that I did, my sanity changed to sadness. This was little Theo transforming into the scared, lost Theo that I met.

I kept washing the walls of the green room. Once that was done, I looked at the remaining clutter in the room. I remembered what Nana said. How much of her I was throwing away. I hadn’t thought too much about the things I was throwing away. Had there been photo books in the bags I had tossed? Knowing me, I would have saved the picture books to get clues of who owned this house. I was desperate for clues in the beginning.

I remembered the letters on the table when I first came here. They were sent letters, yet there were no addresses on them. The alien overlords made it so there would be no clues to who owned the house until they told me.

“All around the mulberry bush!”

Despite knowing little Theo was singing his heart out in a room near mine, it sounded like he was singing it from far away. I stopped collecting junk in my inventory and crept out of the green room.

“The monkey chased the weasel!”

I pushed open the door to the blue room and walked in.

“The monkey thought, ‘twas all in good fun.’”

“Theo?” I asked.

“Pop! Goes the weasel!”

“Theo, is that you?” I asked. I heard more giggling. Like before, the sound seemed to come from every corner of the room. “I just want to talk to you.”

“All around the mulberry bush!

“The monkey chased the weasel!”

“Hey, kid! I want to talk!”

“The monkey thought, ‘twas all in good fun,’

“Pop! Goes the weasel!”

I sighed, but I didn’t want to give up yet. “Hey, Theo! Can I sing with you?”

There was more giggling. My sanity was only losing slivers every minute. I was getting frustrated with the whole thing. I wanted to get rid of the ghosts. Theo had gone through enough. Why was it him who had to face his ghosts?

When I said it in my mind, I understood the twisted logic behind all that. He was the one who needed to defeat them, therefore he needed to be the one to confront his ghosts. I sighed, leaning against the wall. I couldn’t give up yet, though.

“A penny for a spool of thread!” Theo started singing.

“A penny for a spool of thread!” I sang with him, singing faster to catch up with him.

“A penny for a needle!” we both sang at the same time.

“That’s the way the money goes!” I remembered this, because I held out ‘goes’ for as long as I could, so I tried doing the same. Theo still had me beat by a solid seven seconds.

“Pop! Goes the weasel!” we both sang, with little Theo screaming it at the top of his lungs. Little Theo giggled, his voice echoing across the room.

I tried to smile, but I didn’t feel it. Now that I could see the ending of the game, I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Theo needed to face his ghosts. It was Theo who would need to talk to them. Even then, if each ghost reduced their power by ten percent, they would still have sixty percent of their power left over.

Theo thought he’d defeat them by getting rid of them completely. I had a feeling this was not how the game would end. Everything I’d seen from the alien overlords meant they did follow a sort of logic. Despite the ‘game logic’ of this world, I doubted Theo would be standing atop his mount of black sludge the victor, returning to earth and never experiencing depression again. That wasn’t how the world worked. Even the alien overlords admitted to listening to a natural law.

Was I being pessimistic? Or was Theo so focused on this that he refused to see reality? I really got the impression he wouldn’t leave the game until they were killed. Depression couldn’t be killed like this. It went against everything I knew. If depression could be killed this way, millions of people would bargain with the alien overlords to do exactly that.

I sighed, leaning against the wall of the blue room. The ghost of little Theo had left. My inventory was getting full of junk to throw out tomorrow morning. The game still needed to be played.

I finished filling my inventory, then walked down the stairs. Killie greeted me at the foot of the stairs.

“Hey, girl. Let’s go to bed.”